Dream of Going to the Moon, Part 2
Launch day landed on a Tuesday, of all days. Somehow that felt wrong, shouldn’t something like this come with more warning than a regular 6 AM alarm? Daeun’s whole family crowded around the laptop anyway, mugs of coffee nobody was actually drinking going cold on the counter.
T-Minus Ten
“That’s it? That tiny little square?” Her brother had his face about two inches from the screen, squinting at the payload diagram, a disc smaller than a coin, wedged in with hundreds of others, each one somebody’s drawing headed for the Moon. Daeun didn’t say anything. Her stomach had done something weird, like it had grown wings and forgotten how to sit still.
Liftoff
The countdown hit zero. For a full second, maybe two, nothing happened at all. Just fire, smoke, and then a sound that showed up a beat too late through the laptop’s tinny little speakers. And then the rocket was just… gone. A white scratch across the sky, and somewhere inside all that noise: her grandmother’s hands, the dog, her actually-pretty-messy room.
How Fast That Tiny Thing Had to Fly
A rocket needs an almost unbelievable speed to actually break free of Earth, about 11.2 kilometers per second, fast enough to cross a mid-sized city in a single second. Earth’s gravity holds on that tight, so nothing escapes into space for good without going faster than that. Daeun’s tiny disc left Earth at exactly that speed.
Somewhere Above the Clouds Right Now
Days went by. A week. Daeun caught herself doing weird math at random moments, mid math class, brushing her teeth, whatever, trying to work out how far the disc had probably gotten by now.
She wasn’t totally sure why it mattered this much. It just did.
That night she looked up, an ordinary, nothing-special Tuesday moon, and tried to picture her drawing somewhere out in all that dark, still going, still carrying her small messy life toward somewhere enormous. “Almost there,” she said, mostly to herself. And for a second, just a second, she could have sworn the moon looked a little closer than usual.
Your Turn Now
- Where was Daeun’s disc headed, along with everyone else’s drawings?
- How fast does a rocket need to go to fully escape Earth?
- How do you think you’d feel watching your own drawing launch into space?
(Think about it: 1. The Moon. 2. About 11.2 kilometers per second. 3. There’s no single answer, share your story with someone!)
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